Would you like a FREE copy of my memoir/self-help book Become the Best You for #WMHD17?

I often question my motivation for writing, and frequently ask myself what the point of all the sharing is. I have wondered many times whether it actually makes a difference.

The short answer is yes it does.

I might not have a million plus followers, but people regularly get in touch to tell me that I’ve helped improve their well being. They say that my words have made them feel validated and heard. That I’ve brought a smile to their face, even if it’s sometimes through tears. Just take a look at the heartfelt comments on this post if you need proof.

So I’d like to give you a gift today, for world mental health day. I wrote Become the Best You mostly for my own catharsis, but also to help others who are going through a rough time.

Become the Best You details the rocky road I travelled before settling down, getting married and having children

For those who are new to my story, I had a severely dysfunctional childhood, and troubled leap into adulthood at just fifteen. In the book I talk candidly about the decision to cut ties with my family.

As well as going through two mental breakdowns in my twenties, and hitting rock bottom. I talk about every thing I did during that time, to turn my life around.

I truly believe that going through this process before having kids is the only reason I am able to now cope with my chronically stressful life.

Ten years ago, pretty much to the day, I woke up in a Reykjavik hotel bed, drenched in a cold sweat.

I had been there on an all expenses paid work jolly up, and had as per usual got myself into a very messy mess. I had the familiar heart sinking feeling that shit had gone down the night before, but couldn’t recall the details.

It took me some time to gather the momentum to get myself out of bed. I needed the loo but didn’t make it, and instead ended up on the bathroom floor retching. I’ve often wondered if my inability to vomit is a blessing or a curse, and have concluded that it’s both, but that’s a whole other story.

Whilst lying on the bathroom floor trying futilely to eject the poison that I’d been voluntarily feeding myself for the previous forty eight hours, I noticed an empty bottle of wine from the minibar. On the shelf in the shower.

Who in their right mind drinks wine in the shower, straight from the bottle?

That was when I realised I had crossed the line

Once the retching had passed, I sat with my head in my hands and bawled my eyes out. Snippets of the weekend came back to me in flashes. I remembered arguing with my boss, and making a complete idiot out of myself in front of my work colleagues.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I’d put myself in unnecessary danger (again) by taking a taxi from one end of town to the other, alone. In the state I had been in, anything could have happened.

I felt deeply ashamed of myself.

I knew that I could no longer just laugh it all off as I had done so many times before back then. If I was to have a chance of making it through 2007, I couldn’t carry on like that. In the four years between my first mental breakdown and that morning in Iceland, I had many incidents that could (and should) have propelled me to rock bottom.

But they hadn’t. Why not?

I wasn’t ready to face my demons before that morning, and rock bottom only comes after pushing the boundaries to the absolute max

I remember being in that hotel room like it was yesterday. After my pity party in the bathroom I had a shower, got myself dressed, and took a long hard look in the mirror. I was a broken mess. I had survived a shitty childhoodand in many respects had got through my first decade as an adult by the skin of my teeth.

Yet, amid the chaos of my life, I had met some truly amazing people who I am privileged to call my friends. Without even finishing high school, I had managed to forge a decent and fairly paid career. I had also found my wonderful husband, who I was in serious danger of losing at that moment in time.

Ultimately, I knew there and then that I was deeply flawed as a human being, but I was capable of great things too. I hadn’t come this far to give up, and I would be damned if I allowed my relationship with the bottle destroy everything I’d worked so hard to achieve.

I was overwhelmed with a sense of clarity, and the fighter in me who had given up in favour of getting smashed took over.

Just like that, everything suddenly made sense

I was a weekend bender away from losing absolutely everything and everyone that mattered to me. I knew, sitting there in that hotel room, that things had to change. I also realised, perhaps for the first time, that nothing would change unless I did, and that I needed to change a lot.

My attitude.

My behaviour.

My eating habits.

My outlook on life.

Everything.

So that’s when the hard work began.

Step One: Awareness

It’s so much easier to just ignore our problems and hope they will miraculously disappear, but they never do. What actually happens is they become harder to deal with the longer you leave facing them.

To start helping yourself, you have to acknowledge what your problems are in the first place. Self-reflection can be a bitter pill to swallow, but you absolutely must be willing to do it.

It became obvious to me that I was in the mess I was in because of the crappy things that had happened to me. However, I came to realise that holding on to the hurt of the past was destroying my chances of future happiness. I had all but written myself off as ‘tragically messed up’, but I wasn’t. I just needed to make peace with my past, so I could move on from it.

Step Two: Determination

I truly believe that most self-destructive behaviour stems from being engrossed in the cycle of dysfunction. By getting obliterated we are burying our heads in the sand, and not facing up to our problems. We think at the time that we’re having fun, but actually we’re doing even more damage to our broken selves. In order to start healing we need to surround ourselves with the the very best people.

A supportive partner, real friends or loving family will want to help you thrive and succeed in life. They absolutely, categorically, will not try to sabotage your efforts.

People who genuinely love you would only ever want to encourage your success. If you’re at rock bottom, chances are you have toxic people in your life that are holding you back. You’ll need to identify who they are and either redefine the rules of your relationship, or sever ties with them altogether.

Step Three: Courage

You will have to get to know yourself, and always be true to who you really are. This means not getting swept up with the crowd, and never living your life according to anyone else’s timetable. You’ll need to become a ‘what you see is what you get’ type of person, not someone who changes their personality based on who they happen to be with at that moment.

It’s time to identify the steps you need to take, that will get you onto the path to the life you deserve. If you need a little help with doing this, you might find my book Become the Best You useful. Click on the image below for more info.

The ten year anniversary of my second mental breakdown is coming up in a few weeks, so it seems fitting to share this post for World Mental Health Day. My first breakdown happened in 2002. It was triggered by a silly decision, which led to falling out with a lot of my then closest friends.

Over the next four years I unravelled in the most spectacular of ways

My finger was firmly attached to the self-destruct button, and my mental state slowly deteriorated. Cutting ties with my entire family in 2005 took me to a seriously dark place. By November 2006 I properly fell apart, and truly hit rock bottom.

As the anniversary approaches, the date has been playing heavily on my mind. In the last ten years I have fundamentally changed as a person, and have become the type of me I could only dream of being prior to 2006. It took a lot of hard work, but once I was determined to turn my life around, it was clear what I needed to do. I wrote about the entire journey in my book Become the Best You.

Here are the things I wish that I’d known between my two mental breakdowns

Don’t doubt him. Ever! He loves you more than you allow yourself to believe could be true, and he will give you a wonderful future if you let him. Marriage, kids, the whole works. You don’t think you deserve him, and that kind of life, but you do.

Real friends will not care that you’ve screwed up, they will love you regardless. They’ll forgive your drunkarn mistakes, offer a shoulder to cry on, and be there in your hour of need.

Blood isn’t always thicker than water. Tough decisions will be made, and you’ll come to realise that walking away from the people who are supposed to love you the most is the only way you will get to be the person you want to be.

The first step of moving on is making peace with the past. No-one drinks themselves into oblivion or takes shed loads of drugs just for sh*ts and giggles. Behind every addict, or person with a drinking problem there is a story. To truly forget the sins of the past, you have to face them head-on, and make peace with them. Unless you do this, they will haunt you forever.

Eating well really does help. Cutting out the junk food and refined sugar will do more for your mental state than you could possibly imagine. Changing the way you’re eating sounds scary, but once you get started it’ll be just fine. Gone will be the brain fog and wading through treacle feeling, and you’ll have proper energy for the first time in your life.

No amount of booze or drugs will make you forget. They might do temporarily, but when the hangover and/or comedown kicks in you’ll hate yourself even more. The answers will never be found at the bottom of a bottle, or in a strangers bed.

Counselling costs a lot, but it’s a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. You’ll get over the money as soon as you see how much sense Nina talks. That woman will be sunshine on a rainy day, and you’ll be eternally grateful to her.

What you need and what you want are NOT the same thing. Once you learn to distinguish between the two, and separate them, you’ll notice a dramatic improvement to your quality of life.

Making yourself look good won’t guarantee happiness. Losing weight, fixing your teeth and having a perpetual suntan might occasionally boost your self-esteem, but you’ll learn that there is much more to it than superficial looks.

Self-help books are awesome, but you need to be ready to take the information you’re being given on-board. It’s all well and good reading these enlightening, inspirational books, but you also have to be in a position to implement the advice afterwards.

No-one else can make the changes for you. No man, or woman will save you. You need to make the agonising decisions, and not be afraid to jump in head first, and have the courage of your convictions. A brand new, much happier, life is there for the taking, but you need to really want it, for it to become attainable.

Hi, I’m Reneé, Welcome to my blog

I'm a wife and mama of three navigating my way through motherhood, the autism spectrum and home education, whilst trying to remain sane and always authentic. I'm also a real food enthusiast, wannabee chef and published author. Check out my memoir/self-help book Become the Best You. Stay tuned for updates on my current novel Picking up the Pieces.